


Perfect, Despite Everything

by thecryoftheseagulls



Series: Zeryn Brosca [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, First Time, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:25:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryoftheseagulls/pseuds/thecryoftheseagulls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For arandomfactoid, who suggested a fic where Zeryn and Alistair comfort each other and figure things out in the bedroom.</p><p>The first time Zeryn Brosca and Alistair Theirin do the do is after the Landsmeet, with Anora on the throne and Alistair safely just a Grey Warden.</p><p>Update: details of said sex have been added, because of reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect, Despite Everything

After the Landsmeet, the atmosphere at Arl Eamon’s estate is jovial, celebratory. Oghren has used the occasion to raid the arl’s cellar, and everyone is sprawled around the dining room with some form of alcohol in hand. She can feel Alistair’s relief radiating off him from half a room away, for all he is examining the bottom of his goblet with a fierce frown in the corner. They have the place to themselves; most of the Arl’s retinue has already departed with him to Redcliffe, and Queen Anora too has gone to join him. Her last words echo in Zeryn’s mind:

“You have united Ferelden, Warden. Now we face the Blight.”

When a message arrives from Slim Couldry, Zeryn is more than happy for the distraction. She spends the rest of the day on one last heist, taking Leliana along to steal the Tears of Andraste from Bann Franderel. It’s a distraction, perhaps, from the looming task of stopping the Blight, from tomorrow’s march to join Arl Eamon and the armies she has gathered in Redcliffe. Still, it feels like an accomplishment to place the Tears in Slim’s hands, with Leliana’s pleased expression at her side, and know that for all her thievery she’s actually done something worth being proud of. The Dark Wolf, the nobles call her. It feels like a truer name than Grey Warden ever has.

It’s past dark when they return, and most everyone has already retired for the night. Shale and Oghren are still in the dining hall when Zeryn comes in to grab her own bottle of wine before she climbs the stairs to her quarters, Cailan at her side. She undresses, pours a glass and sits with Cailan on the floor before the fire.

“Well, boy, this is it,” she says, scratching behind his ear. “Tomorrow it all comes together.” The Mabari gives a quiet bark that sounds affirmatory and licks her cheek. Zeryn chuckles. 

“For better or worse then,” she tells him quietly, staring into the flames, “what decisions I’ve made will stand. Might be enough to stop the Blight – at least we’ve got an army now – but there’s no telling what the consequences will be ultimately.” She sips at her wine and gives a low laugh. “They had no idea what they were getting into, putting a duster in charge of kingdoms and kings, did they?” At her side, Cailan gives a woof of some opinion, and Zeryn sighs. “At least Cailan can go to the Stone, or the Maker, or whatever these humans call it, in peace now, with Loghain gone. Duncan too.”

She’s not quite sure how long she sits there – she thinks she added logs to the fire at least once before dozing off, one arm thrown over Cailan’s side. The door opens soundlessly enough but when the floorboards creak, Zeryn starts up, fingers scrabbling automatically for the dagger she’s left next to the wine bottle on the floor. She’s on her feet, knife in hand, and a snarl on her lips before she realizes Cailan hasn’t stirred. 

“Andraste’s breath, Zeryn, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Alistair’s voice sounds apologetically from the shadows. He steps out into the weak light of the half-dead fire.  
“Alistair?” she asks, confused. He’s shirtless, and in her room at Andraste-knows what hour, and Zeryn is brandishing a dagger in her small-clothes. Hardly the most intimidating of foes, she knows. She tilts her head back to look up at him.

Alistair holds out both hands to her. “Easy love, it’s just me,” he says softly. Zeryn rubs at her eyes and sighs before dropping the dagger back to the floor. 

“What are you doing in here?” she asks. “Is something wrong?”

“No…no, no, nothing’s wrong. I just thought…that is…I really don’t know how to ask you this…I mean, um. I couldn’t sleep.” He speaks quickly, the words tripping over themselves. He wrings his hands and then runs his fingers through his hair abruptly.

Zeryn tilts her head slightly, and pads forward to take his hand. He bends down automatically, and Zeryn stands on her tiptoes and curls her free hand behind his head to kiss him. The kiss is long and slow and when he straightens, she moves both her hands to rest on his chest. 

“Are you sweating?” she asks him, trying not to smile.

“No! I mean yes. I mean…I’m a little nervous, sure. Not that this is anything bad or frightening or…well, yes,” Alistair says.

Zeryn crooks a smile at that. “You should be resting,” she chides gently. “We’ve had a victory today, but we’ve a long march to Redcliffe tomorrow.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “But I wanted to talk to you. I’ve got all these things in my head – about you, about the Wardens, Loghain and Duncan and Anora and the Blight, and I just…Oh, how do I say this? You’d think it would be easier, but every time I’m around you, I feel as if my head’s about to explode. I – I can’t think straight.”

“That’s…very sweet. I think,” Zeryn says with a giggle. 

“Here’s the thing: being near you makes me crazy, but I can’t imagine being without you. Not ever. I thought I was going to have to be King – Eamon kept talking about carrying on the Theirin line and saving Ferelden and how does one say no, I don’t actually want to be king, to that? Sounds pretty stupid. But I never wanted the throne, and you saw that. You – you heard me. And I am so grateful for that. I came so close to losing you – being tied down to kingship and responsibilities instead of standing as a Warden at your side and the thought of that – of, of not being with you always…” he shudders, cups his large hand around the side of her face, and leans down to press his forehead to hers. Zeryn grips at his shoulder fiercely.

“I’m not going anywhere, Alistair,” she says. “Not ever. And I couldn’t sentence you to a life you never wanted, not if I could stop it, not if it meant losing you forever.”

“And I love you for that,” he groans. “So much.”

Zeryn tips her head back to kiss him again, drags her lips against his roughly. He pulls her flush to him and strokes his fingers against her face and whispers,

“I want…”

“What do you want?” she asks him, nipping gently at his lips.

“I want to spend the night with you. Here, in the estate. Maybe this is too fast, I don’t know, but…I know what I feel,” Alistair says.

Zeryn leans back, wraps her fingers around his chin. “It’s not too fast, not for me. But you’re sure you want to do this now? I know you wanted to wait before. I didn’t want to push you.”

“I wanted to wait for the perfect time, the perfect place, but when will it be perfect? If things were, we wouldn’t even have met,” Alistair says. “If Duncan was still here and everything hadn’t gone to pieces, maybe I wouldn’t have even spent any time with you, got to know you like I have. We sort of…stumbled into each other…” 

Zeryn has to smile at that.

“And despite this being the least perfect time,” Alistair continues. “I still found myself falling for you in between all the fighting and the politics and everything else. I really don’t want to wait anymore. I’ve...I’ve never done this before. You know that. I want it to be with you…while we have the chance. In case…well, we don’t really know what will happen when we get to Redcliffe, do we? There’s still a chance I might lose you.”

“Hey,” she whispers. “My life has never been anywhere close to being perfect, and I don’t give a shite about the timing. Meeting you, loving you, has been the best, most perfect thing that has ever happened to me. So don’t…don’t talk like that. We’re going to make it through this, and afterwards there will be all the time we want.”

“Will there?” he asks, brushing some of her red hair behind her ear. “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. If this Blight has taught me anything, it’s that we can’t know what’s coming. I’d like to say that I threw caution to the wind at least once, that I loved a woman who loved me back, and it was…perfect, despite everything else.”

“You don’t have to convince me, Alistair,” Zeryn says softly. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

“I know. Maker, I’m such an idiot at these things,” Alistair groans, scrubbing a hand against his face. Zeryn stands on her tiptoes again to press a kiss to his cheek, the gesture surprisingly chaste.

“Come to bed, love,” she says, taking his hand. 

Zeryn kisses Alistair backwards towards the bed until his thighs hit the bedside, and he’s forced to sit down – well, tip backwards, really. She climbs up after him and he pulls her to him, kissing her slowly with his big hands wrapped around her waist. Zeryn straddles his lap, tilts her head to the side and deepens the kiss, her hand coming up to tangle in his hair. She can feel his eagerness in the way his fingers tighten into the bare skin of her side, feel the way his hips buck upwards underneath her, and she grins against his lips. 

With her hands on his shoulders, she pulls back. Alistair nearly chases after her, his chin jutting stubbornly forward. He licks his lips, quirks an eyebrow at her, the look in his eye hungry and eager and warm. She gives him a tiny shove.

“Lie back,” she says, and he obliges, sinking back to rest on his elbows. Zeryn slides off his lap and between his legs, and he groans at the friction against his already-erect cock. She trails her hands down his chest, traces the fine gold hair that lines the dips and rises of his muscles, breathes,

“Andraste’s ashes, you are so… beyond perfect. Like some knight from a story, you are.”

Alistair’s fingers curl around her wandering hand and he bends his head forward to kiss her. Zeryn rolls his nipple between her fingers and he gasps into her mouth. She shifts to kiss down his whole body - kisses the corner of his lips, his chin, his neck, down his chest. She sweeps her tongue over his nipple, whispers against his skin,

“I am going to make this so perfect for you, love. Everything you’ve ever dreamed.”

He looks at her with blown pupils, says thickly, “ _Zeryn_ ,” in a voice full of need that sends a rush of warmth right through her. She kisses his skin once more and then her hands move to the ties on his trousers.

“I’ve got you, Alistair,” she murmurs. He raises his hips from the bed so she can slide his trousers all the way off, and then he’s naked on the bedspread, all pale skin and gold hair and muscle, and she sighs. By her fucked up ancestors, he’s everything she’s ever wanted and never thought she could have, all lean grace and height and so much less hair than she’s used to. And Maker help her, the way he looks at her as she wraps her fingers around his cock; you’d think she was Andraste herself instead of just a nobody lucky to not have been dead in a ditch long ago. His breath hitches as she strokes him, slowly at first, and she watches his fists curl into the blankets. He doesn’t take his eyes from her face. 

Zeryn strokes him languidly with a practiced hand, runs her free fingers up his inner thigh, watches the way his breath catches with each touch. She brushes her thumb over his hipbone, admires the raw strength of him kept still and wanting by her hands. He’s trembling; she can feel the need in him by the way his hips buck and he fucks into her hand desperately until he manages to gasp out her name again, and she knows he’s close. She takes her hand away and he whimpers.

“Shh, I’ve got you,” she whispers again. She reaches to strip off her underclothes, remove the last layer of cloth between them, and Alistair catches his lip between his teeth as she frees her tiny breasts. She smiles at the expression, reaches out to take his hand from its grip on the blanket and place it on her breast. “Touch me,” she says, meaning it to come out as an invitation, but it comes out more like a whine, a plea, and then his hands are all over her, cupping her breasts, running down her sides, clutching at her ass. She moans, surges up to kiss him messily, her hand in his perfect hair. Alistair slides his tongue into her open mouth, grasps her by the waist and flips her over until he has both hands on either side of her head on the bed and his long body is pressed all down her and his lips are still chasing after hers and she can’t think of anything but the warmth of him down her whole body. Zeryn wraps her legs around his waist, curls her hands around his neck and kisses him like she won’t ever stop, like breathing has somehow become optional, and this time it’s Alistair who pulls back, panting. 

“Maker, Zeryn,” he groans, staring down at her with something that would be blasphemously close to worship in his eyes, if Zeryn believed in such a thing, and that awe is what undoes her. 

“Fuck me, Alistair,” she begs and he doesn’t need to be asked twice; he shifts her hips down and positions himself and pushes inside her and she cries out. He’s big, but he isn’t the first human man she’s been with since she’s come to the surface (all those visits to the Pearl, every time they were in Denerim, just because she could. She could fuck whoever she wanted there and no one judged her for the mark on her face or thought she was just some noble-hunter after a place in their household; instead it was all about _her_ , what she wanted, what she needed, and the other woman, or man, or once the woman with a man’s body). And for months, all she has wanted is Alistair, all of him, him inside her, his lips on her lips, his hands on her skin. Zeryn grinds down against him and he fucks into her, his hands on her hips, and it’s quick and rough and simple because they both _want_ so badly that anything more than him inside her, her around him, seems like excess. Zeryn feels her orgasm building almost immediately, teeters on the edge. She reaches down to rub at her clit and that’s all she needs to come, moaning his name and spasming around him, and Alistair screams and comes inside her. 

When he collapses on the bed beside her, looking dazed, Zeryn curls up against his broad frame and tucks her head under his chin, fingers carding through the hair on his chest. After a moment, Alistair moves to kiss her forehead and wraps his arms around her.

“No matter what happens when we get to Redcliffe, know that I love you, Zeryn,” he says.

"I love you too,” she murmurs. She snorts and chuckles. “Of all the things I thought would happen when I came to the surface, that wasn’t one of them.”

He lifts his head slightly to study her. “What, loving me?”

“No,” she says, “falling in love.”

“Hm. Me either,” he admits. “I’ve never felt like this before, about anyone.”

Zeryn reaches down to take his hand and pulls it close, kisses his fingers. 

“Well, that’s one thing I did right, then. Keeping you all to myself.”

“Hmm. You know, according to all the sisters at the monastery, I should have been struck by lightning by now.”

“That so?” Zeryn asks, shifting to look him in the eye.

“Yep. Lightning first, then the end of civilization as we know it. I’m a bad, bad man,” Alistair says. Zeryn rolls her eyes and puts her head back on his chest. 

“Your people are so repressed. I don’t know how you even function.” 

He laughs. Zeryn’s eyes drift closed.

“You know, I wanted to thank you for today,” Alistair says after a few moments.

“You already thanked me, love.”

“No, not for making Anora queen, for…for Loghain.” Zeryn opens her eyes as he continues, “You had as much right as me, to execute him. But thank you, for letting me. I feel like…maybe I haven’t failed Duncan so badly, now.”

“You never failed him, Alistair,” Zeryn says, a little sharply. 

“No, I know that – technically. I still feel like I did, sometimes.”

Zeryn sits up. 

“You and me, we’ve accomplished a lot together, you know that. I don’t know that we’ve always made the best decisions, but we were dealt a terrible hand, and we’ve made the best of it.”

“You’ve made the best of it,” Alistair says. 

“You’ve been with me through all of it, Alistair, right at my side. This army we’ve raised, the alliances we’ve forged – they’re as much your doing as mine. Duncan would be proud of that, proud of you,” Zeryn says. Alistair touches her cheek.

“You think so?” he asks. Zeryn nods in return.

“I think so,” she says. He kisses her.

“So…what now? Where do we go from here?” Alistair asks.

“Now,” Zeryn says, giving him a little push until he lays back, “we sleep. Tomorrow, we finish this. Then maybe Orlais and cake…if you still want to.”

“Are you kidding?” he chuckles as she lays her head on his shoulder. “Live in sin with you? I could do that for life. Once that pesky archdemon’s dead.”

“Mm. Let’s plan on that, then,” Zeryn says with a sigh. “Really, I don’t care what we do afterwards, so long as we’re together.” Her voice lowers, roughens, and she says, “You’re the only thing I want.”

“Maker, same,” he murmurs against her hair, and Zeryn holds him tightly, like if she lets her fingers slip from his skin, she might lose him.


End file.
